If anyone has done more than Victor and Wendy Zammit to spread the gospel of survival, I don’t know who the person might be. Their Friday Report at http://www.victorzammit.com reaches thousands of people in more 100 countries every week. It offers a variety of interesting, informative, intriguing, and inspirational stories relating to spirituality, especially survival.

When it comes to weighing the evidence for survival, few people are more qualified than Victor Zammit, LL.B., Ph.D., (below) a retired lawyer of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and the High Court of Australia. Now retired from the practice of law, Zammit calls himself a full-time afterlife researcher. Wendy Zammit, M.A., (below) has contributed significantly in their joint venture. Their book, A Lawyer Presents the Evidence for the Afterlife, first published in 1996, under the title A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife, has been revised and recently republished by White Crow Books.

I recently interviewed the Zammits for The Searchlight, a quarterly publication of the Academy for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies. Here is that interview:

Victor, when I interviewed you several years back, you said that you felt you had a mission to make known the evidence for survival. Would you mind elaborating on this a little and explain why you feel it is a goal worthy of your time?

“Disseminating the evidence for the afterlife on a global level has truly become a passion for me these days. We – Wendy and I – receive regular emails from the five continents. The response basically is that the researched information is helping people everywhere to overcome the fear of death and to cope better with the loss of their loved ones. Further, transmitted information from the afterlife dimension tells us that there are virtually millions of people who have no idea about the afterlife and on crossing over have serious problems adjusting. The urgent message is to do whatever we can to help people around the world to know that consciousness survives physical death and that there is accountability for our actions and omissions while on earth.”

Wendy, you appear to share Victor’s zeal for helping others awaken to the reality of life after death. How did you become interested in the subject?

“Victor and I have been together for forty-five years now and have always shared our interests. We both did degrees in psychology and history and postgraduate research degrees so we have always been interested in human consciousness. For many years we were both involved in debates and human rights and social justice issues while Victor was studying and working in law. So when Victor began having psychic experiences more than twenty years ago, it was natural for us to begin researching them together. In the early days we went as a couple to every religious, spiritual and New Age group we could find, read the same books and had long discussions. When we began to research physical mediumship it was a joint enterprise and we both became members of David Thompson’s Circle of the Silver Cord.”

Do you feel that significant progress is being made relative to accepting the evidence for survival?

(VZ) “Yes, I accept there has been a paradigm shift these last twenty-five years in this regard. Whilst I accept that there is significant progress being made globally there is huge amount of work to be done spreading the light. But I am optimistic for the future. I do believe that there are powerful afterlife forces joined by those who are on earth – and they are making a significant contribution guiding the world towards the acceptance of the afterlife.”

(WZ) “My feeling is that in the West more people are having direct experiences and are talking about them. Many people I talk to often start out with direct after death contacts without the aid of a medium. When I compare the attitude today to what it was when we started this work I can see that there is a lot more openness and information about NDEs, after death contacts, about OBEs, and about reincarnation.”

I know that both of you have witnessed quite a bit of physical mediumship. There are many believers in survival who say that mental mediumship is more convincing than physical mediumship. Do you agree?

(VZ ) “Physical mediumship is not all the same. Just seeing things move around the room is not all that convincing. But materialization is another thing, especially when you have reunions with loved ones who can talk directly with you. For me materializations of loved ones are the greatest discovery in paranormal history. I conversed with my crossed- over younger sister who materialized and talked about matters we talked about before she crossed over. Wendy’s father materialized and talked to her about things only Wendy and her father knew – and he kissed her on her forehead. Like my sister, his voice was his original, authentic voice he had when he lived on earth (and he spoke with his distinctive Australian accent). Over seven years we witnessed over a hundred reunions where materialized spirits conversed with loved ones in the séance room who talked about familiar things only they knew. Over this time I did come across a very small minority of so-called Spiritualists who showed they have an irretrievably closed mind about materializations. I have to concede, I do not know why they are so determined that there cannot be such a thing– I find it very puzzling!

“Having said that, I accept that gifted mental mediumship is also very convincing. We regularly report some of the very best brilliant mental mediums in our Friday afterlife report. The mediums who took part in Sensing Murder (NZ) are absolutely stunning with the information they are able to produce.”

(WZ) “Quite honestly over the seven years we have been investigating David Thompson’s mediumship we have seen so many people absolutely stunned when William walks around the room – hearing his heavy footsteps, hearing him clap his hands and coming close and talk to you and touch you. If you are open to it, physical mediumship hits you with a force. It’s like “Oh my God this is real.” On the other hand there are some people who are just so overwhelmed by it that they become irrational – claiming that there has to be a trick to it. People need to have studied physical mediumship and its history before going to sit – it does need preparation. And of course it’s just not possible for some people who are unable to sit in a dark room in fairly confined conditions for almost two hours.”

The mediumship of yesteryear – much of which you cite in your book – seems to have been much more dynamic and convincing than the mediumship of today. Do you agree?

(VZ) “Certainly all the great mediums you have written about were really amazing and we may never see someone like Mrs. Leonora Piper again. Gladys Osborne Leonard and Mrs. Eileen Garrett also seem to have been amazing. And we certainly don’t seem to have the number of great materialization mediums we had in the past like Helen Duncan, Alec Harris, Gordon Higginson, Estelle Roberts, and Jack Webber to name a few.
“But on the other hand some of the mental mediums of today are superb. Gordon Smith has proved himself in tests with Archie Roy and Tricia Robertson. Some of the American mediums tested by the Windbridge Institute have performed magnificently. And in our new book we give examples of readings by gifted mediums Deb Webber and Kelvin Cruickshank that have more than forty confirmed points of information each.”

A number of the old researchers concluded that the direct voice mediumship was the most convincing. Emily French, Leslie Flint, Etta Wriedt, and John Sloan immediately come to mind. Do you know of anyone today who produces such quality mediumship as they did? If not, why do you think that is?

(VZ) “It is hard to say as we don’t really have any direct voice mediums today to compare them with. I don’t know of anyone doing the kind of direct voice mediumship of the mediums you mentioned.

“Why is it so? For direct voice mediumship you seem to need to have a dedicated circle willing to sit for the development of the medium. Conditions have changed so much in the West that it is extremely hard to get a dedicated group together, at least in the cities, to meet at the same time every week for up to seven years without missing a week. Think about it. You need to have a sufficiently large living space to dedicate a room to it. Then you need to have people who live close enough to each other to be able to come together at the same time every week. Gordon Higginson would not even allow the members of his Circle to even miss a week for holidays. The sitters need to have the patience to sit together in the darkness for an hour or so without anything happening, week after week after week. There are so many other distractions these days that people in the past did not have – television, videos, computers, internet, video games. And there is more pressure on people to use their spare time to earn money to pay for the high cost of living.”

(WZ) “I also think that in the West we are being bombarded with different electrical frequencies that are making physical mediumship more difficult. The proliferation of wireless internet and mobile phones as well as all the signals coming from satellites can’t be helping. Many people are finding it impossible to switch off mentally as well.”

How important is the issue of harmony between the sitters?

(VZ) “Most people don’t understand that in any kind of physical mediumship the harmony of the energy between the sitters is absolutely vital. We have seen sittings where there is a large group of very positive and joyful people produce stunning results. The next night if there are only a couple of people who are depressed, skeptical or anxious, the energy will be dramatically weakened. Many circles have had to be disbanded and start again because of disharmony. This seems to be the same through all forms of spirit contact including EVP and ITC.”

I understand that you are putting out a new book. Please tell the readers something about it.

(VZ) “As you know we have had an earlier book, A Lawyer presents the Case for the Afterlife on the Internet in various versions free of charge in downloadable form for the last ten years. Volunteers who loved the earlier book translated it into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Dutch, German, French and Russian. Every day we receive emails from people who say that the material in this book has changed their lives. I have been sending out hard copies from home but the cost of international postage from Australia makes it too expensive for a lot of people. A lot of people have been asking us to do an updated version including some of the new material that we have been putting in our weekly Friday Afterlife Reports. So we decided to update the book calling it A Lawyer Presents the Evidence for the Afterlife and make it available through the online bookshops which will reduce the cost of postage. Of course, in addition to the updating many of the existing chapters, there are several new chapters and a sharp short cross-examination of a skeptic. But once again it concentrates on evidence that is credible, repeatable and admissible in a court of law.”

(WZ) “Nowadays, we also know from our Friday Report statistics that we have a large number of readers who speak English as a second language, especially in Russia, China and South America. So we have tried to write the new book in plain English, using short sentences and familiar vocabulary to make it easier for people to understand and translate. We are writing for people who are completely new to afterlife research as well as for people with a wide existing knowledge. We have tried to make it an introduction to afterlife research but also to give details of the ‘classics’ in afterlife research as well as the many new books that have become available in the last couple of years, including the wonderful series of books that you have been putting out.”

Where so you see the future of afterlife research going?

(VZ) “Well of course, as you have been saying in your books, the research that has been done with the great mediums of the past already provides absolute and stunning evidence for the afterlife. It’s like the research with psi – they can’t keep doing the same experiments over and over. I suppose the dream would be to have materialization reunions in lighted conditions so that they could be videoed. Other than that I think it would be good to have a simpler and more accessible version of the cross correspondences, with messages coming through different mediums all over the world and being assembled in a central place. Having said that, I do accept that there is already sufficient afterlife evidence to convince any open-minded skeptic about the existence of the afterlife. But the evidence will continue to be refined in the many of the areas of research we cover. As to the closed minded skeptics, for some seven reasons I mention in my homepage, they are not in a position to objectively identify evidence when the evidence is blatantly clear to everybody else.”

(WZ) “My feeling is that we have entered a time when people are wanting to have their own direct experiences of afterlife contact. I think the work on Guided Afterlife Connections by Dr. Craig Hogan and Rochelle Wright has enormous potential in this regard as well as the work in out-of-body explorations, which we outline in the new book. Dr. Julie Beischel of the Windbridge Institute is onto something when she talks about applied mediumship research. I love her idea of having mediums work alongside counselors to help people who are grieving. I’m also very inspired by the idea of putting together a team of forensic mediums to help solve cold cases. The US organization Find Me has created a model that could be applied to other countries.”

A Lawyer Presents the Evidence for the Afterlife by Victor & Wendy Zammit is published by White Crow Books and available from Amazon and online bookstores.

and many of the links are out of date and broken, I used the contact email to inform them, but the email also bounced. I’m presuming that this site is no longer monitored. Are these people still alive.

Joe, Mon 20 Jun, 10:30

Frank,

Thanks for the info on Drifter/Forests. We pretty much figured him out and have banned him. I didn’t know his full name, however, until you provided the link. Now I understand why he is so opposed to the idea of life after death. He comes across, to me at least, as a pure hedonist and probably doesn’t want to face the consequences of that lifestyle after death. What better way to dismiss it than to oppose it?

Michael, Thu 18 Jul, 03:16

“Drifter” is the endless reincarnation of ‘forests’ aka Darryl Forests a roving troll of no admirable distinction other than being a nutjob miscreant living off Dad and Mum’s money at college.

P.S. Well done interview although I am not the biggest fan of Victor’s, I enjoyed the read.

Frank, Tue 16 Jul, 05:49

Dear Jon,

Thank you for sharing your brother-in-law’s heroin story.

But the addiction factor: It has often been noted in medical contexts that heroin achieves a re-wiring of the brain that makes the addict fear sobriety, and hence, addiction becomes inevitable.

But this is a physical condition. So how does it transfer to the discarnate state? Even if the condition is physiological, not only physical, it is still only the brain that is involved, not the mind.

So unless people like Mr Zammit want to claim that the brain also survives physical death, it seems to me that there is no scope for the view that there are ‘addicted’ discarnates.

And, as far as I know, no-one has claimed that the mind/soul/consciousness can suffer damage from the exigencies of earthly life. (The various OBEers, etc, who see addicted discarnates are probably dreaming, not seeing.)
Sorry I go on. But I do think that this ‘addicted discarnates’ proposition harms the now-excellent case for the afterlife. I’d like to see it dropped. It is hopelessly infertile.

Sophie, Tue 25 Jun, 02:15

Regarding deceased drug users.

From everything I’ve gleaned on this subject, the things that put us into hellish states (described in religious books as fire and brimstone) when we physically die, are our attachments, cravings, or addictions, which (to me) are the same thing.

These attachments could be to drugs, money, people, houses, or anything physical, and they hold us in a lower, slower darker vibrational state close to our earth vibration.

If someone is a heroin addict and has the motivation to get clean, I’m told, with the right help, he or she could get through the painful cold turkey process in around 90 days.

Once we have crossed over we have no opportunity to satisfy physical cravings, and given that time as we know it has diminished, we might find ourselves going through (seemingly) never-ending cold turkey which in earth time could last (and feel ike) a lot longer than 90 days.

My brother-in-law, Terry lived with us when I was in my late teens and he was a heroin addict. He was a lovely man, but a hopeless addict. Back then he was so badly addicted to the drug he’d almost run out of veins to inject into, and was sticking needles into his groin, feet, or anywhere he could find a entry point. (It makes me sick writing this so forgive me if you’re feeling the same way).

Eventually he kicked the habit and was clean for around 30 years until he died a few years ago.

If I had to guess, I would say when he died he died without an attachment to heroin, so he didn’t have suffer the endless cravings that a ‘current’ addict might. That said, he might find himself suffering as a result of seeing all the mayhem he caused to others during that time but that’s a different discussion, and I think that’s where Michael’s ‘moral specific gravity’ might come in.

Coming off an addictive drug like heroin ‘here’ is an enormous feat, and by all accounts it’s much harder to do ‘there’, and I’m sure that would feel like hell.

I never judged Terry, nor did any of the family; we all loved him, but if he died craving heroin, would he find himself in a hellish state? I would think so. Would God be judging him? I don’t think so. Could he get out of that hellish state? Yes, but only by becoming detached or getting clean by going through a seemingly everlasting, eternal (to use religious vernacular) bout of cold turkey.

I think this is why sages like Jesus, Buddha, Lau Tzu, and Krishna, and most religions talk about the value of detachment, particularly at the point of physical death.

In Matthew, a rich young man asks Jesus what actions bring eternal life. First Jesus advises the man to obey the commandments. When the man responds that he already observes them, and asks what else he can do, Jesus adds:
If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.

He who would be serene and pure needs but one thing, detachment. —Meister Eckhart.

Of course I might be wrong. ☺

Jon, Mon 24 Jun, 16:05

Sophie

I’m not sure which passage in the Zammit book that you are referring to, but the preponderance of spirit communication does suggest that there is a “fire of the mind” in the lower levels of the afterlife, though it is not eternal as orthodoxy claims. No doubt there is a lot more involved than having been a drug user that results in one’s moral specific gravity placing him or her in the lower levels, but it must certainly be a factor.

Thanks for your comment.

Michael Tymn, Mon 24 Jun, 11:46

Dear Mike,

Thank you for this amiable interview. I have a gripe, though: There is a passage in Mr Zammit’s book that does a job on deceased drug users that is very reminiscent of the arcane ‘hellfire and brimstones’ mentality. Indeed, he even has levels of the afterlife that are set aside for low-life. The plausibility of all this is negligible. So, yes: he is a good man. But I will not genuflect.

There is also the matter of his ‘no God’ line. That the leaders of Christianity have been venal through the ages does not establish that God does not exist. Indeed, I think Mr Zammit himself would benefit from some acquaintance with the concept of God as unconditional, all-inclusive love. That would iron out the traces of retributive moralist that still adhere to him.

Blessings,

Sophie

Sophie, Sun 23 Jun, 20:36

Referring to the skeptical comment below:

Those chemical substances or any other material we know of is the basic composition of the substance called ectoplasm. It was examined in laboratories several times in the early 20th century, and often it consisted of epithelial tissue, white blood cells, undigested food and a few more things. It is created by the spirit team during a séance by taking all the above-mentioned stuff from medium, sitters and even furniture. It will be returned immediately afterwards, though. So, if there were chemical substances found in Etta Wriedt’s trumpet, it had most likely to do with the ectoplasm. And this claim is proven by the evidential communications made possible through her mediumship, as Michael has already said. I always suggest to read the original sources first before hearing the deniers’ side.

S. P., Fri 31 May, 18:43

Drifter,

You’ve been reading too many of the pseudoskeptical magazines and blog spots. Let’s assume that some chemical substances were found in Etta Wriedt’s trumpet. How does that explain the evidential dialogue that came through them?

There were many people in her day as now that refused to believe and made up stories that circulated and were accepted as fact by the know-nothings.

Etta Wriedt was a genuine medium, no ands, ifs,or buts about it. End of discussion. I have no desire to go back and forth with someone who simply wants to believe the pseudoskeptics.

Michael Tymn, Fri 31 May, 13:30

I have no dispute with mental mediums but Etta Wriedt was found to be a fraud. The sounds in her trumpet were caused by a mixture of potassium and water and other cases other substances, such as Lycopodium seeds. This is not speculation Kristian Birkeland a physicist who won the nobel prize many times went to one of her séances, he turned the light on half way through and snatched the trumpets and found the chemical substances in them.

Wriedt was also caught with a hidden telescopic aluminium tube which she changed her voice with. On occasion her daughter also snuck into her séances and made some childish sounds.

Gordon Higginson was also exposed as a fraud, before his séance it was found that he had hidden muslin cloth under a seat which he used to put over himself and pretend to his audience was a spirit. Webber was also found cheating, he attached telescopic reaching rod to his trumpet but hid its real use with crepe paper. This is all well known if you read the literature.

Drifter, Thu 30 May, 10:19

Victor and Wendy have won their crowns already.
The truth honestly told.
Their light shines bright in this current darkness.
Keep it coming.

Shine on
DTL

Derek Lynas, Fri 24 May, 20:21

The Zammit’s are really heroes of the Web and I’m proud of doing their same job (foremost in Italy, where there are very few websites like mine) even if on a narrower scale. You (Mike), Zammit, and a lot of other people, we are the heralds of a wonderful message: LIFE IS ETERNAL AND DEATH IS NOT THE END. I’m pretty sure that our mission will bring wonderful fruits very soon and I am thankful to all of my Internet’s Friends who are helping me to spread the Message at least in my poor (from a Spiritual point of view) Country.
Love, Light and Serenity.
Claudiohttp://www.ampupage.it

Claudio, Tue 21 May, 18:19

Mike,

This is another of your “Priceless” interviews ...

Victor and Wendy’s “off the cuff” perspective is invaluable, especially to those who follow their weekly Newsletter ...

Many thanks,

RBB

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Excerpt from A Course in Miracles. IX. The “Hero” of the Dream – 74 The body is the central figure in the dreaming of the world. There is no dream without it, nor does it exist without the dream in which it acts as if it were a person, to be seen and be believed. Read here